We are writing as a group of 93 organisations from across Europe’s cultural and creative sectors ahead of the European Council discussions on the future EU budget.

On 4-5 November, representatives from the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) met in Lisbon to discuss how to advance gender equality within collective management organisations (CMOs) and increase women creators among members and on the boards. The SAA was among them.

Culture contributes to 30 million jobs worldwide and represents around 3% of the world’s GDP (UNESCO). However, we are still far from policies that put creators at the centre of our booming creative industries and that understands their full potential and value in global development and cooperation.

At the Cannes Film Festival more than 500 filmmakers came together, urging EU citizens to vote in the European elections. Many EU citizens did vote, in fact the turnout was 51%, the highest in 20 years.

In the coming days, through the elections, EU citizens will decide the fate of the new European Parliament. Many are pondering whom they should vote for, but culture is definitively not the decisive factor shaping public opinion.

European filmmakers have launched a manifesto stressing the importance of voting in the upcoming European elections. This manifesto is signed by 500 personalities from the cinema world, 

Half of all Hollywood blockbusters fail to pass the Bechdel test, including the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars and all but one of the Harry Potter movies. One may think it is a simple test, but many films lack the requirements: two female characters who both have a name and talk to each other about something other than a man.

Brussels’ European quarter is getting ready for the elections on 23-26 May. Political parties are finalising their lists of candidates for the European Parliament and organisations and interest groups are designing campaigns to engage citizens to vote.

At this week’s Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, Commissioner Gabriel will present the prototype of the Directory of European Films developed by the European Audiovisual Observatory to increase the visibility of European films on the video-on-demand (VOD) market.

Today, the visibility of European films is still insufficient and there is still an important margin for improvement on distribution, promotion and findability on online platforms.

Dear President Juncker, We are writing to share our thoughts on the place of culture in the EU budget ahead of the presentation by the European Commission of its draft Regulation for the post-2020 MFF in May 2018.

General Approach adopted by Culture Council goes further than European Commission proposal and promises a positive result on promotion of European works ahead of negotiations on final text with European Parliament and Commission.